CULTURAL IDENTITY AND CITIZENSHIP. THE CASE OF THE ROMA MINORITY IN ROMANIA VALENTIN QUINTUS NICOLESCU Abstract My paper focuses on the intersection between the Roma cultural-identitary construction and the political concept of citizenship, trying to reveal if such an approach can prove itself helpful in providing a better understanding of the unilaterality of the majority-Roma relationship. By unilaterality I understand the particular model in which the Roma-Romanian relationship has structured itself overtime. It mainly consists of a segregationist view that stresses the majority’s responsibility with the minority’s integration process and the failures to promote a partnership with the minority. This approach tends, in my opinion, to treat the minority in absentia, producing therefore the well-known effects of the so-called “Roma problem”. On the other hand, the idea of empowering the Roma minority is also seen as being fundamentally within the majority’s attributions, therefore contradicting the very essence of the concept. My approach seeks to apply a theoretical framework developed first by Gramsci and later by Boudieu to this particular situation. Thus I hope to be able to provide a better understanding of both the history and the present of majority-minority relations and to highlight possible directions or outcomes relating to the dichotomy of integration/communitarian privacy in the case of the Roma minority. Keywords: Roma minority, cultural identity, citizenship, Gramsci, Bourdieu Motto: „Large scale immigration, within a society so well fettled as ours, can only be positively perceived provided that the immigrants have a solid background and that their religion and race do not prevent them from marrying and mixing with members of the host-population „ The Royal Commision on Population, 1949 1 I. Introduction I came up with the idea for this paper on the basis of an event that took place not so long ago on the streets of Bucharest: coming back home one afternoon I saw an elder Roma woman, poorly dressed, going from one passer-by to another and addressing them. People were reluctant, turned their head away or even changing their path. I couldn’t hear what the woman was saying to the others, but the situation seemed to confirm the supposition that she was begging. I went about my way until I inevitably got in her path: “Would you happen to know which is the way out of the passage that gets me to the University bus station?”. I pointed her to it and went about my way home somewhat displeased with the fact that, although I often bear witness to such contexts, although I try to learn about what is commonly known as “The Roma Problem”, I have not succeeded in finding appropriate answers to such otherwise legitimate questions as: What are the causes to such rejections? To what does this “Roma Problem”, which is ever more frequently mentioned in Romania and Europe, amount? Can it be conceived in terms of “solutions”? Lecturer, Faculty of Social and Administrative Sciences, “Nicolae Titulescu” University, Bucharest; Ph.D. candidate with National School of Political Studies and Public Administration (NSPSPA), Bucharest (e-mail: valentin_nico@yahoo.com), beneficiary of the project “Doctoral scholarships supporting research: Competitiveness, quality, and cooperation in the European Higher Education Area”, co-funded by the European Union through the European Social Fund, Sectorial Operational Programme Human Resources Development 2007-2013. 1 Apud Ferréol, Gilles (Ed.), Cet enie i integrare social (Citizenship and Social Integration) (Bucharest: INI Publishing, 1999), p. 54.